The Big Hop. With the author David Rooney
From Brooklands Museum Talks by Nonesuche Media
March 19, 2026 · 1h 9m
About this episode
David Rooney discusses the true story of the first flight across the Atlantic and the aviators who attempted it in 1919.
The powerful true story of the first flight across the Atlantic and the ordinary heroes who risked their lives in pursuit of progress. In 1919, in Newfoundland, four teams of aviators came from Britain to compete in “the Big Hop”: an audacious race to be the first to fly, non-stop, across the Atlantic Ocean. One pair of competitors was forced to abandon the journey halfway, and two pairs never made it into the air. Only one team, after a death-defying sixteen-hour flight, made it to Ireland. Celebrated on both continents, the transatlantic contest offered a surge of inspiration—and a welcome distraction—to a public reeling from the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But the seven airmen who made the attempt were quickly forgotten, their achievement overshadowed by the solo Atlantic flights of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart years later. In The Big Hop, David grants the pioneering aviators of 1919 the spotlight they deserve. From Harry Hawker, the pilot who as a young man had watched Houdini fly over Australia, to the engineer Ted Brown, a US citizen who joined the Royal Flying Corps, David traces the lives of the unassuming men who performed extraordinary acts in the sky…
People in this episode
Guest: David Rooney
Topics covered
- aviation history
- transatlantic flight
- World War I
- pioneering aviators
- forgotten heroes
Keywords
- Atlantic flight
- aviators
- 1919
- Big Hop
- David Rooney
- Harry Hawker
- Ted Brown
- aviation archives
- Great War
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Royal Flying Corps
Places: Newfoundland, Ireland, Australia
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